MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE: 'It Looks Like This Is Going To Be Our Year'

Michael Lello of Weekender recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Weekender: "Rust In Peace" is considered to be a historic metal album. What's your opinion of it?

Mustaine: (Laughs) I like it. It's peculiar when people say that, because it's not one of our more challenging albums. It also reminds me of a very dark period in my life and my career. David Ellefson and I were living together, and we didn't really have a band at the time. We were putting all of the pieces together, and we were living with strangers. Every chance we would get, we would shack up some place and find some unsuspecting victim to take us an emotional hostage. So the record has a lot of different feelings for me.

Being on stage and playing it is fun for me, because a lot of the fans are mesmerized watching it happen. I think a lot of people don't think that this record could be played live, and, I mean, for Pete's sake, I wrote the damn record, so why couldn't I play it?

Weekender: How have Chris [Broderick, guitar] and Shawn [Drover, drums] taken to this material?

Mustaine: Well, Shawn was pretty much dyed-in-the-wool, so he knows the stuff pretty well, and Chris is an incredible student of the guitar and that's what he lives for, so he was able to learn all of the notation of the music. So then it was just a matter of moving pieces around, phrasing-wise, and just getting some of the hand shapes and the nuances of my right-hand picking patterns, my left-hand fretting technique and stuff just to make this record sound right, because some guy could play the same exact thing that I'm playing, (but) it won't sound the same. That's fairly obvious, but I'm talking about they could play it almost exactly like I play it and still not sound the same because of little teeny tricks that I have. When I show that to Chris and say, "Does that make sense," (he says),"Yeah, totally, man," and it's much better now. Whenever we clamp down on a part and we get into that pocket, everybody knows. This record has a very cold, jazzy kind of swing to it.

Weekender: Are there plans to bring any "Big Four" (METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX) shows to the U.S.?

Mustaine: No. That's up to people that organize this. But I think that's going to require a lot of stuff to take place with some other people. If it happens, and it's good for us, like the thing happened with the Big Four overseas so far, great. Ya know, we're on a really good run right now, and inasmuch as the Big Four thing is super-successful, if it's successful it'll be great for all of us. The same can be said right now for the "Rust In Peace" tour — it's successful, and it's great for us. I take the same kind of commitment to this performance as I would to the performances this summer.

Weekender: I see you're only playing one song from "Endgame" on this tour.

Mustaine: Just one. We don't have a lot of time to play. We've been contracted for 75 minutes, which is not very long, and we actually play over that contracted period because it feels like it's cheating the fans. But that's just the way of the world right now, ya know? They'll book the band for 75 minutes, and if we play 75 minutes, then they'll get what they want and we get what we're paid for. But who gets cheated? Well, I do, because I don't get to play as much as I want, and the fans do, because they don't get to hear as much as they want. That's kind of one of the ugly sides of this business that people don't see. We've got to make the decision ourselves. Do we compromise and give more than what we're contracted for? And the answer to that is always a pretty resounding "yes."

Weekender: How did Dave Ellefson go from suing you for $18.5 million to you inviting him back into MEGADETH?

Mustaine: Well, I can't speak for him, but all I can say is that the opportunity presented itself, and I prayed about it, and I asked him if he wanted to come play, and he said "Yeah," and we worked it out.

Obviously, there were some things we had to work out because we had a very close relationship. When you're really close to somebody and then the relationship takes a pause or even stops, there's usually some hurt feelings, and we had to clear some of that stuff up. Now it's just a matter of just catching up for all the good times we had.

Every time we were looking to conquer the music industry and get on top, every time we got there something happened. It was just crazy. But right now everything is firing on all cylinders, and it looks like this is going to be our year.

Read the entire interview from Weekender.

Video footage of MEGADETH's March 12, 2010 concert at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (approximately 30 minutes away from Pittsburgh) can be viewed below (courtesy of "digitallive").